Posted on 20 February 2010

At the first stop on the Road To Hell, how slow must someone be before they realise that a gun might be useful?
Rest Stop Dead Ahead (2006), the first release to DVD of Raw Feed, an imprint of Warner Home Video: Jess (Joey Mendicino) and girlfriend Nicole (Jaimie Alexender) have run away from home. They’re driving to Los Angeles when they decide to take a short cut. Nicole has to pee (”Again?”), but she won’t do it on the roadside, so they end up stopping at a Rest Stop. Little does Nicole know that it would be more hygenic, and way more safer to go to the toilet on the roadside in the soil, than this particular Rest Stop.

Jess disappears and Nicole is left stranded.

Middle of nowhere? No phone signal? Teenagers alone? Deserted building? Sounds quite a common theme doesn’t it? The premise is somewhat cliched, although the effects are pretty gruesome. Strangely in this kind of film, the set pieces are way too slow, and very predictable. The suspense doesn’t build, it’s low during a set piece and then just ends on a semi-high.

The whole film is transformed into a comedic mess before it had even got half way. Saying this, the effects are suitably gruesome, making teeth and buttocks alike clench. Most are better, up a few notches. from Saw. The added aspect of the supernatural adds to the story early on.

Interestingly, when Nicole meets another abductee (Tracey Kress) in the Rest Stop’s bathroom, Tracey tells her she wanted to see the Rolling Stones play in Tucson. Later Nicole finds out that Tracey went missing in 1971. The Stones didn’t play in Tucson, Arizona until June 14th, 1972.

The real downer in the film is that the leads character just doesn’t have her head screwed on. She is just so thick. There’s a police man injured, the maniac is attacking them with his truck. She just kneels there watching as the truck rolls over his legs. Now, c’mon, but wouldn’t she have grabbed the police man’s gun and started shooting? Ok, the gun is used further on in the story, and you could say she was in shock, but when I was watching it with an audience, they were shouting, “The gun! Take the gun! Use the gun!”… And she has a few more opportunities to take and use it, before the police man actually says to her to take it, and she ends up using it.

Worth watching for the effects, but apart from that, steer clear as it’s a big disappointment.

Stewie as Darth Vader is the best character by far (as he is in Family Guy), just his appearance and accent suit the spoofy arch villain completely.

The animation surpasses the Family Guy series, most noticeably with the spaceship scenes and some of the ground attack scenes with the AT-ATs.

Storywise, it stays failthful to the original print of Empire Strikes Back, rather than the remodelled one. There isn’t the girlie scream when Skywalker gets his hand chopped off by Darth for example. It’s interesting to know that it took longer for this to be signed off by George Lucas because of the content, primarily the swearing.

Unfortunately, the jokes, on the whole, don’t really work. A few sniggers are abound, but it’s not really laugh out loud material. Some of the more memorable jokes are when Han lets Leia know how she speaks, and that to hear it day in day out is such a drag, when Han goes into one of the Large Camels and sees a baby camel and remarks that she’s pregnant.

Most of the time I was just MMmming.

It’s really recommended only for people who will get Family Guy and Star Wars jokes. You really need to know how they both operate to see the funny side.

And now that we’re in a Family Guy Spoof mood, here’s some…

Ideas for Family Guy spoofs:
The Original Scooby Doo
The Saw series
Wedding Singer
Somthing, something, something
Debbie Does Dallas (only joking)

Do you have any other ideas for a Family Guy spoof? I’m sure there’s loads we’ve missed!

Posted on 20 February 2010

This is a neat idea which utilizes flash technology with a story to produce an online graphical novel. Each page has a next and previous so you can work forwards (and backwards through the story. What possibly differentiates this idea from normal online graphical novels is that it’s animated, and it mixes real photography (of people mainly), digital images and sound effects.

The story itself is an interesting (if not new) idea of alien technology, alien war and a love twist. Because it’s using flash, some of the shading and rendering seems to be too smooth, whereas the real life photography is spot on.

It is split into Books which mean you can sample the chapters in bite size chunks. The cliff hangers are not too bad, and would probably make you want to read the next chapter. It’s worth a look and won’t take too long to go through all the chapters.